2014 in Biomedicine: Rewriting DNA, Decoding the Brain, and a GMO Paradox

From genetically modified foods to gene therapy, 2014 was a big year for rewriting biology.

The year in biotechnology began with a landmark event. A decade after the first human genome was decoded at a cost of about $3 billion, the sequencing-machine company Illumina, of San Diego, introduced a new model, the Hyseq X-10, that can do it for around $1,000 per genome.

The system, which costs $10 million and can decode 20,000 genomes a year, was snapped up by large research labs, startup firms like J. Craig Venter’s Human Longevity (which plans to sequence 40,000 people a year), and even by the British government (the U.K. is the first country with a national genome sequencing project).

Cheap sequencing means a deluge of information and a new role for technology designed to handle and exploit “big data.” The search giant Google was the tech company most attuned to the trend, launching a scientific project to collect biological data about healthy humans, and offering to store any genome on its servers for $25 per year. A coalition of genetics researchers backed by Google tried to introduce technical standards, like those that govern the Web, as a way of organizing an “Internet of DNA” over which researchers might share data.

Easy access to DNA information led to debates over how much consumers should know. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said direct-to-consumer genetic health tests aren’t yet ready to be marketed. But consumers found ways to get the data anyway. Thousands of people headed to unregulated corners of the Internet to learn about their genes, and one father even managed to sequence the DNA of his own unborn son, claiming a controversial first.

This year, 10 of 35 new drugs approved by the FDA were biological molecules, like antibodies or protein injections. That was a record. And the FDA says the list of new drugs entering testing for the first time is dominated by biological treatments.

To scientists, there’s irony to the way things are developing. In Europe, the first Western gene therapy went on sale this year (it treats a rare liver disease by fixing a mutant gene) for $1.4 million a dose—making it the most expensive medicine in history. Yet European countries don’t see a similar value in GMO crops and have essentially banned them.

George Church, a genetic engineer at Harvard Medical School, thinks this presents a technology paradox. He was the source of our favorite quotation of the year: “We have genetically modified human beings walking around in Europe not eating GMO food.”